The Plot to Perpetuate Slavery

In the aftermath of the September 1862 Battle of Antietam, President Abraham Lincoln issued the most significant presidential decree in American history, the Emancipation Proclamation, which would forever free all slaves in territory not under Union control. Nevertheless, his chief military commander in the field, Major General George B. McClellan, was outraged. Within days, two former Union officers nefariously crossed the lines into rebeldom, an initiative resulting in an elaborate subterfuge to scam Lincoln into withdrawing the Proclamation in return for nebulous promises of peace.

This book tells the story, obscured in a veil of secrecy for 150 years, of the cloak and dagger chess match between Union detectives and Southern operatives in the months before emancipation become effective. Despite an ominous warning by author Herman Melville five years before, the scheme to perpetuate slavery almost succeeded, for it was engineered by a man the National Police Gazette once declared the “King of the Confidence Men.”

Phil Roycraft is an environmental engineer, historian and author specializing in the Civil War era. He has written articles for a variety of historical journals including the Michigan History Magazine, Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies, Journal of Illinois History and the Maryland Historical Magazine. He lives in Cadillac, Michigan.

Phil Roycraft
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 233
Bibliographic Info: 30 photos, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2024
pISBN: 978-1-4766-9495-5
eISBN: 978-1-4766-5339-6
Imprint: McFarland

Preface 1
Introduction 3
1. A Confidence Man in Manhattan 7
2. Another Grand Scheme 16
3. The Aristocracy of Slaveholding Interests 27
4. Monument Street Girls 38
5. On Mansfield’s Secret Service 49
6. A Recusant Chaplain 60
7. Loudoun County Scouts 72
8. Redeeming Their Tarnished Honor 81
9. A Brighter and More Permanent Prosperity 93
10. The Curiosity Tour 103
11. Strange Bedfellows 112
12. A Fraudulent Peace 122
13. Mission to Maryland 129
14. The Church Militant 141
15. Attack of the Copperheads 152
16. A Shallow Attempt at Humbuggery 163
Postscript 175
Chapter Notes 179
Bibliography 209
Index 219